


know thine kin

by deniigiq



Series: Blindspot and the Ordeal of Being Known [10]
Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Family Issues, Found Family, Gen, Immigration, Legal Drama, M/M, Sam has Older Sibling syndrome, Tension, Undocumented character, points at a pigeon: is this a father?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25246153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “Oh,” Mr. Guo said. “You’re younger than I thought you’d be.”It said on that piece of paper in his hands presently that Sam was 24.“You father made you sound—”“Don’t call him that,” Sam said.Mr. Guo cut himself off.(Sam never wanted charity. He wanted justice.)
Relationships: Hannah Chung & Samuel Chung, Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Samuel Chung & Kirsten McDuffie, Samuel Chung & Lu Wei, Samuel Chung & Matt Murdock, Samuel Chung & his family
Series: Blindspot and the Ordeal of Being Known [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658656
Comments: 59
Kudos: 444





	1. red for lions

**Author's Note:**

> Just gonna go ahead and bite this bullet. Things have kind of been building in this direction, so fuck it. Why not? Let's go.

Hannah texted him in Mandarin and he dropped everything to go into the back room to check his phone.

He felt Leilani and Achara’s eyes on his back as he went, but he didn’t think to turn around.

Hannah was unusually respectful.

Scared.

She was scared.

“Some guy keeps calling me,” she wrote. “He keeps asking for mom. I tell him he’s got the wrong number, but this time he asked to speak to you. I don’t know him. Do you know a guy called Da-Shin?”

Sam did not. He thought for a moment it might be one of his old coworkers, but no. He didn’t know anyone from work who knew both himself and Mom. That had to be someone else.

**SC:** tell him to stop calling you

 **HC:** I tried. He’s super insistent?

 **SC:** give him my number then.

 **HC:** I don’t want to. What if it’s some kind of trap?

 **SC:** fuck

 **HC:** should I tell him Mom’s dead?

 **SC:** did he mention anything of why he’s calling? Maybe it’s mom’s old job?

 **HC:** No, mom’s old job always told me who they were. This guy is just super insistent

 **SC:** does he sound old?

 **HC:** maybe? A little? Idk

 **SC:** next time he calls you tell him he’s got the wrong number and if he calls back again you’re blocking his

 **HC:** okay

 **HC:** thank you

 **SC:** if he calls back again after that, send him to me and I’ll deal with it. You’re okay Hannah I’ve got you.

 **HC:** okay thank you

“Is everything okay?” Leilani asked when Sam emerged from the backroom and went to collect his documents from where he’d abandoned them on the front desk.

“Yeah, some weird guy is harassing my sister,” he said. He looked up and smiled at Mr. Hilgram in front of him. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Here, if you could go through these and make sure everything is signed, that would be great. That’s all I—”

His phone started buzzing again.

Insistently.

It wasn’t a text. Hannah was calling.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I think I’ve got to take this.”

“Don’t worry about it, young man,” Mr. Hilgram said, “We’ve all been there. See to your sister.”

Sam appreciated him; he took the call to the backroom again.

“Sammy,” Hannah said, sounding completely unlike herself—on the verge of tears almost, “I can’t—he won’t stop. He knew my name.”

He what?

“And your name.”

_What._

“And Mom’s name and where she used to work—what do I do?”

Fuckin’ _shit_.

Goddamnit.

“Did he sound Chinese?” Sam asked urgently. “Or did he sound like someone else? Did he say anything else?”

Hannah was making gasping sounds on the other side of the line. Sam’s heart sped up with each one.

If that was some ICE agent, they were fucked. Absolutely fucked.

“Yeah, he sounded Chinese,” Hannah said, sniffing hard. “He had an accent.”

“What kind of accent?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know,” Hannah said. “I can’t tell them apart like you can.”

EUGH.

Fuck.

Goddamnit.

If he was there, he would have just taken the phone the next time this shithead called, but he wasn’t. Hannah was on her own.

“Wait right there,” Sam said. “Don’t answer the next call, okay? Don’t do anything until I call back.”

“Okay,” she said.

Sam hung up and forced himself to take a deep breath.

He ran through the script in his head.

I am exercising my right to remain silent. Am I being detained? Show me a warrant please. I want to speak with my attorney.

I am exercising my right to remain silent.

I am exercising my right to remain silent.

I am—

Jesus, fuck.

Deep breaths. Hannah would be fine. She’d be _fine_.

I am exer---

I am exercising—

Oh, god.

No. Calm, calm, calm.

Hannah needed him. Sam was in an office surrounded by lawyers. He lived in house teeming with them. He would be okay. Hannah needed him to help her deal with this. She was scared. It was his responsibility to protect her.

He slipped out of the backroom and headed down the hallway on Blindspot’s feet Kirsten’s office.

Kirsten said, point blank, that he nor Hannah was to answer that phone call until she’d spoken to some contacts back in the city about whether or not ICE was doing round-ups.

“You,” she told Sam firmly, “Are going to be _fine_ , okay? Hannah is an American citizen and these people have no reason to be calling her. You are not there with her and so she is not complicit in anything, okay? And you are here, with us, and upstairs is my house and a private residence, so ICE cannot come in here.”

Yes. Right. That was smart.

Okay.

“Tell Hannah that everything is alright and she can go about her day. She can block that number,” Kirsten said smoothly. “Even if it’s not ICE, neither of you know the guy and he has no right to be calling you two, okay?”

Oh, yeah. Obviously.

Why hadn’t he thought of that?

“Because you’ve got bigger problems on your mind,” Kirsten said. “Big breath in. Big breath out. We’re all good. We’re all safe.”

Yes. Yes.

Of course.

“Go upstairs and settle down,” Kirsten told him.

Yeah. He—he’d do that.

His legs felt like jelly as he went--like his feet where sticking to the floor, leaving behind syrupy ropes of tar with each step.

Leilani came and popped her head upstairs to check on him after about five agonizing minutes of trying to chill the fuck on Kirsten’s couch.

“Sam?” she asked.

“I’m good,” he said. “Just a—a bit of a close call for a second there.”

Leilani said nothing.

“Kirsten just pulled me out and told me if an ICE agent came in that we were to get one of the lawyers immediately,” she said.

Welp. There went that secret from Achara. So much for that one.

“Sam.”

“I’m fine,” he said, rubbing at his face. “Everything is fine.”

“It doesn’t sound fine,” Leilani said seriously.

Sam didn’t know what to tell her. It wasn’t the first time he’d been caught off-guard and it wouldn’t be the last.

“It’s fine,” Sam repeated. “We’re all fine. I just freaked out. Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare anyone.”

Leilani pursed her lips and finally finished climbing up the stairs. She came over next to him and gave him a brief, awkward squeeze around the shoulders.

“If you need anything— _anything_ —you let me know, okay?” she said.

He huffed a miserable laugh.

“Thanks, girl,” he said. “I just need to uh, calm down for now.”

“Take your time,” she said. Then paused.

“Achara thinks it’s for a client,” she said.

Oh, thank god.

“I _wish_ ,” Sam moaned, rubbing at his face.

“Everything’s going to be okay, Sammy,” Leilani told him firmly. “And anyways, you’ve got the big guy. He won’t let anything happen to you. Right?”

Ah.

Hm.

Well, probably not, given that Matt had fought a gazillion Hand warriors for him once already. That was a pretty solid show of loyalty, as far as these things went.

“If the US government was a secret cult, then that might work,” he sighed.

Leilani hummed.

“Who’s to say it’s not?” she asked.

Fair point.

“I’m going back down. Mr. Hilgram is worried about you. I’ll tell him that your sister had a panic attack, but you talked her down and she’s okay now.”

Nice.

A+ coworker. Gold stars for Leilani. A mountain of them.

“I don’t deserve you,” he crooned after her.

“You definitely don’t,” Leilani volleyed back up at him before being swallowed up again by the stairs.

Sam couldn’t decide if Matt’s sudden and violent protective instincts were overblown, flattering, or heart-warming; anyway around, they did actually make him feel a little safer at the end of the day.

“Some low-life, piece of shit, cowardice,” Matt ranted at Foggy from his office doorway while Foggy nodded along and tapped his files into neatness.

“Complete bullshit,” Matt said, following Foggy as he edged past him and went to go pick through the mail Leilani had left neatly piled on in the tray by the front desk when she’d left. He flicked through it and handed the envelopes addressed to Matt to him while he carried on furiously.

“One for you, Sammy,” Foggy said over Matt’s ranting. He handed over the envelope.

Sam took it. He didn’t open it though, work stopped at 5. He wasn’t on the clock anymore.

“The fuckin’ nerve,” Matt said.

“Another,” Foggy said, handing a heavier envelope to Sam. It felt different from the first. The paper was thicker.

Sam squinted at the smeared ink on the return address.

“Matthew, Matthew, Matthew,” Foggy read out, stuffing letters into Matt’s overflowing elbow collection as he went. “Kirsten, the Leiderman docs got sent back--mine, mine. Matt, they didn’t send this one in braille, bud. Dick move. Fuck you too, Jim Reynolds.”

Sam frowned at the heavy paper in his hand.

He didn’t remember mailing anything to New York. Definitely not Chinatown. He would have had a moment over it if he had.

He shook the envelope.

“Bills,” Foggy continued to read. “Bills, bills, bills—Kirsten, water bill; that’s for you. Matty, from the library. Sam, from the Thompsons.”

Sam took the new envelope without thinking and stuffed it under his arm with the other one.

“Eldridge street?” he asked.

The others went quiet and turned his way.

“Eldridge?” Foggy repeated. “What? And Canal?”

Mm, close to it. Weird.

Sam shook the envelope again, the letter inside knocked around.

“Maybe it’s the Deleon office,” Foggy said. “Trying to steal our paralegal. I tell you what, Matt, Clarissa was on one conference call and wants our whole staff.”

“Including me,” Matt said.

“ _Including you_ ,” Foggy accused viciously.

Sam hummed and opened the envelope while those two bickered.

He was surprised to find a handwritten letter inside. The writing was rushed and a little smeared, just like the return address.

He dropped it after only reading the first line.

The other two stopped fussing, but Sam didn’t hear anything. He could only stare down at the characters on the ground.

_Hello, I hope that this is the son of Lu Wei._

Ahahahahahaha

Sam was burning this.

Matt offered to help him. He said he loved a good catharsis. Kirsten agreed from the hallway and announced that she needed just a second to grab a lighter.

Foggy stopped the three of them before they could file out to Kirsten’s trash cans on the side of the office and said that maybe, just _maybe_ Sam should read the rest of the letter.

Matt said that was 95% most likely unnecessary. Sam agreed with him and amended that percentage to 98.6%. Kirsten thought that all paper was flammable.

Kirsten was Sam’s favorite person at the moment.

Foggy said that he wasn’t going to be here when the fucking fire department came to investigate the neighbors’ arson claims and for all of them to get their asses back inside ‘or else.’

They filed back in sadly.

> Hello, I hope this is the son of Lu Wei.
> 
> I have been trying to reach your mother for some time, however, have so far been unsuccessful. It is important to that I speak to her as soon as possible.
> 
> I know it has been a long time since we were last in contact and I’m sorry for that. Please tell her that I did not mean to hurt her and I would truly cherish the chance to meet again and make things up to her.
> 
> Circumstances have changed in the last year which would benefit both yourself and your mother enormously and after all this time, I have felt nothing but guilt for how things ended up with the two of you.
> 
> I would like to set things right.
> 
> Please contact the number below to arrange a meeting.
> 
> (P.S. I found this contact address on a website for a law firm, and you appeared so much like the person who I am hoping to contact that I felt that I had no choice but to try to reach out to you. If you are not the son of Lu Wei, please do also get in contact to let me know.)
> 
> Thank you.

Sam blinked.

“This guy didn’t even leave his name,” he said.

“So we can burn it now?” Matt asked.

Yes.

“No,” Foggy said. “Clearly, this guy knows your mother, Sam.”

And?

That made him more, not less, creepy.

“I recognize that,” Foggy said. “But whoever this is seems to be trying to make amends with her, and from the sounds of it, they really care about her. So don’t you think that, if nothing else, they deserve to know that she’s passed?”

“Do I have to?” Sam asked Foggy miserably.

“It’s your mom,” Foggy said. “You’re her first-born kid. You get to make those decisions. But I’ll bet that if these folks knew that she’s passed, they would stop calling your sister.”

Ew.

Get thine logic far from this place.

Sam turned to Matt for a second opinion. It was always good to get at least two, right?

Matt’s eyebrows stayed right where they were.

“Or,” he said in Foggy’s direction, “We can burn this and avoid talking about it at all for the rest of time?”

Oooh. Sam liked that option. He turned back towards Foggy with a finger pointing over his shoulder back at Matt. Kirsten slowly lifted one and joined him in this.

Foggy scowled.

“I don’t know why I bother,” he eventually said. “I’m going home. You lugs are useless to me. Make your bad decisions, see if I care.”

He left them all standing by the front desk. Kirsten watched him go.

“Maybe,” she started.

Matt snatched the letter and ducked away from them at full speed. Sam panicked. He lurched after and tackled the old man before he got to the side door.

“I’ll burn it,” he said. “It’s _my_ letter.”

Matt huffed.

“Fine,” he said. “You burn it.”

“Or maybe--?” Kirsten piped up.

Matt snapped his face her way with one of his ‘shut _up_ , I’m doing things’ expressions. Sam considered it before looking back down to the paper in his hands.

He felt guilty now.

Mom had friends.

He knew that she had. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to sending the ones he was most familiar with news of her passing and that was--

That wasn’t--

It wasn’t fair.

And maybe if this guy was the same one harassing Hannah, a single call could set the record straight.

“I don’t want to burn it anymore,” he said.

Matt threw his hands up and asked why he was even there. He announced he was going home. Kirsten told him to take Sam with him.

He said he’d think about it and marched off to get his stick.

Sam sent Hannah a picture of the letter. She was just as perplexed.

“He just searched your name and sent it to the fiftieth result?” she asked.

“Apparently,” Sam said.

“Wild,” Hannah said. “He must have known Mom like, super well to see her in your face.”

Yeah.

“We should tell her friends,” Sam said.

Hannah went quiet.

“Yeah,” she said. “We should.”

“Do you still have her address book?” Sam asked.

“I’ve got it.”

“Should we send cards?”

“Maybe something really brief,” Hannah said. “Just like, Hi Mom’s friend. She’s gone now. Sorry. We can’t have a memorial for her. You know why.”

That sucked.

Man, that sucked.

“It’s okay,” Hannah said. “They’ll do one with or without us. You know how they are.”

There was that at least.

“I’m gonna call this guy,” Sam told her. “Before it gets too late. Don’t work too hard.”

“I’ll try,” Hannah said. “Tell me how it goes. Love you, bro.”

Yeah, he loved her, too.

He hung up and stared down at the letter in his hand.

Well.

Here goes nothin’.

He dialed the number and waited for two rings before someone picked up.

“Hello?” they said.

They didn’t sound threatening.

“Hi,” Sam said. “I got a letter from someone who wrote this number on it.”

“Is this Samuel?” the person asked sharply.

Aha.

Nice try.

“Lu Wei is dead,” Sam said immediately. “She died a few months ago. Tell the person who wrote this letter that I’m sorry but there is no way to contact her. Please stop calling my family. Good night.”

“WAIT,” the other person said. “Wait, wait. Hold on, don’t hang up.”

Oho.

See, when he said it like that, Sam got the _burning_ urge to do the exact opposite.

Matt would be so proud.

“She’s dead?” the person repeated. “She’s died? How did she die?”

Wow. Insensitive much.

“An accident,” Sam said stiffly.

“Was there a service?” the person asked hurriedly.

Sam said nothing. He realized that he was clenching his jaw.

“Good night,” he said.

“NO—hold on. Just one second. You’re—you’re her son, right? Samuel? Samuel Chung?”

Mmmmmm. Bye-bye time.

He hung up.

His chest felt hot from sternum to collarbone.

He decided that sleep could wait. Blindspot needed a little time out on the town. The old guy wouldn’t mind; it was probably about time to walk him anyways.

His phone was ringing off the hook. It had been all morning. Sam was considering putting it under a pot in the kitchen and leaving it there for the day.

He didn’t, of course, he needed it for life purposes.

On the upside, Hannah said that she hadn’t received any more calls, which meant that the folks harassing her had turned their attention onto Sam.

That was better.

That was how it should have been from the start.

Sensei was not happy about the calling, though. He came skulking into the back room from his office and seized Sam’s phone. He fucked with the settings until it was on silent and then he skulked back off to go fight with the ADA some more.

Sam decided to let him have this one. He’d kept the old man out until 4am. Matt needed his beauty rest—especially when there was an ADA on the other line.

The phone started up its nonsense again during lunch. Kirsten took it off the table and threw it on the bed in her guest bedroom. She closed the door and they all carried on with lunch.

Everyone except Matt.

Matt came tapping up the stairs just was everyone was leaving and made a beeline to the guest room. He opened the door and closed it behind him. Sam followed after him to save his phone from violent and miserable dismemberment.

He let it buzz and ring and freak out on his desk while he went through his checklists for each of his cases. Leilani came back and set some of his requested files on his desk. She watched the phone rattle around in the bowl of rice Sam had set it in.

“Someone really wants to get ahold of you,” she noted.

“He’s at the end of the queue,” Sam said without looking away from his screen. “He has to wait his turn.”

Leilani made a thinking sound.

“If you say so,” she decided. “You coming out for drinks afterwards?”

Mmmm. Not that night.

He’d been out late. Teach wasn’t the only one who needed their beauty sleep.

He finally answered the phone while he was locking up the front desk cabinets. There were no clients left in the waiting area and Achara and Leilani had gone off to meet the staff from Haddad, Tomlinson & Partners for a few drinks and a good bitch session.

Matt and Kirsten were arguing in Kirsten’s office; Sam could hear them through the walls. Foggy had been locked in his office all day, doing intense research into the Malave case.

When the line picked up, the guy on the other side wasn’t half as polite as he had been the day before.

“Do you not answer anyone who calls you?” he asked.

“I have a policy,” Sam said simply. “Anyone who calls me more than three times goes to the back of the queue. Is there a reason you’ve been blowing up my phone?”

“So rude,” the guy said.

Sam took the phone away from his ear and hung up again. He stuffed it into his pocket just as Matt and Kirsten emerged speaking entirely in the word ‘fine.’ It started ringing almost immediately.

“Apprentice,” Matt declared. “At the behest of this one’s paranoia, we are going to court tomorrow.”

Oh?

That was fun.

“It _needs_ a signature,” Kirsten said. “And I don’t trust her clerks for a second.”

“Paperwork requires a blind shepherd,” Matt translated for Sam’s benefit. “Two blind shepherds, even, one to supervise the other.”

“Just do it Matt,” Kirsten said, shoving a file into Matt’s elbow. “Charm the judge, do whatever it is you do. Get it signed. Bring it home. Daredevil saves the day.”

Matt, Sam could tell, once he was through pouting about being told what to do, was going to abuse this opportunity to go lay on Judge Pearson’s desk and ask her if she knew how brilliant her latest article was and how charming she herself was. He was going to stay there until Judge Pearson told him, like she always did, that he was still about twenty years too young for her, no matter what his inclinations were.

Matt would say that she had no idea of what his inclinations were and Judge Pearson would call him an alleycat and Sam would have to suffer through this whole unnecessary faux-mating ritual for an entire twenty minutes before Judge Pearson took the papers to her desk to sign them.

But hey, getting out of the office was always fun. Fieldtrips to the courthouse were never without their drama.

“Sure thing, bossman,” Sam said, standing up and brushing off his knees. His phone fell out of his phone and clattered to the floor.

It rattled.

Matt cocked his head at it. Kirsten blinked.

“Still?” she asked.

Unfortunately.

“Did you tell them to fuck off?” she asked.

“Not in so many words,” Sam said. He leaned down and collected his phone, then dutifully shoved it into his back pocket. “Told them Mom passed. They wanted more detail and I have no interest in giving it to them.”

“Fair,” Matt said. “Where is my darling beloved? We’re going to miss the first inning at this rate—FOGS.”

Kirsten watched him abandon them to stalk off with purpose and then swiveled her head back to Sam.

“Gimme,” she said,

Oho.

Now here was a twist. He handed over the phone. Kirsten answered the call and held it to her ear. Sam heard the start of a tinny voice, but Kirsten didn’t let it get far.

“This is Ms. Kirsten McDuffie, attorney at law,” she said. “Is there a reason that you’re harassing my client?”

Sam heard the silence.

“I’ll thank you to please cease and desist,” Kirsten said smoothly. Then she started to hang up, but the voice on the other side started talking again at double time. Whatever the guy was saying made her pause and go quiet for a long time, just listening.

“I see,” she said, suddenly seriously. “Well, I will discuss this information with him and we will contact you with our decision on what the next steps will be. Yes. Thank you. Don’t call again. Mm-hm. Bye.”

She hung up and handed the phone over. Then she squeezed his shoulder.

“Sammy,” she said kindly. “Do you have change on you?”

Huh?

Yes?

“Give me a dollar,” she said.

Oh. Okay? He fumbled through his pockets and produced his wallet.

“I’ve got fifteen?” he said.

“Great, give me five,” she said. “In ones, please.”

He counted out the change and handed it over. Kirsten stuffed two bucks into her shirt and went and threw open Foggy’s door to reveal Matt sitting suggestively on the desk in front of him while Fogs reached around him for the pen he was holding hostage. They both seemed surprised as Kirsten bustled in and shoved two bucks into Foggy’s sleeve and one into Matt’s belt.

“Congrats, boys,” she said. “We’re all hired. Sammy, you are now represented by Nelson, Murdock & McDuffie.


	2. define: father

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wanted to leave.  
> To go back to New York.  
> To be with Hannah and to be with Mom and to just cry this out with people who would get it.  
> He wanted Mom’s dry, warm hands the scent of something powdery and floral and he’d never get that again.
> 
> He had Daredevil.  
> That’s what he fucking had.  
> So Daredevil would have to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> references to undocumented immigration processes/quandaries, racism, past mutilation, and grief guys. a whole lot of fucking grief.

The man on the other side of the phone was the same Da-Shin calling Hannah, yes, Kirsten explained.

But somehow that wasn’t the worst part.

The worst part was that he claimed to be a lawyer. An immigration lawyer. He said that it was urgent that he and his client speak to Sam.

The urge to go find a sink to drown in was strong. Matt removed himself from Foggy’s desk to come settle in next to Sam and keep a hand on his shoulder to keep him from hyperventilating right then and there.

It helped, actually. The weight was a good distraction.

“He might be posing,” Foggy said. “Did you get his full name?”

“Guo,” Kirsten said. “Da-Shin Guo.”

Sam committed it to memory so that he could scratch it into the wall of his future detainment cell. Matt’s hand got heavier on his shoulder.

Foggy googled the name and bit a thumb as he read. Kirsten leaned over his shoulder to join him. Matt remained patient. He felt like a rock; Sam looked up at him to find his jaw set but his face otherwise unreadable.

“Diagnosis?” Matt asked after a moment.

“He’s real,” Kristen said. “From San Diego. Law at UCI. Interned at a human rights org.”

“Where’s he based?” Matt asked.

“Mm. Adjunct at Columbia,” Kirsten said.

Wuh-oh.

“Do we know him?” Matt asked Foggy.

“Nah,” Foggy said. “Hired only a few years ago.”

The room turned to Sam.

“Do _you_ know him?” Kirsten asked.

Sam shook his head frantically. The lawyers turned away and communed in their hive mind.

“He doesn’t seem threatening,” Foggy said, typing away. “Based on his track record, it looks like he’s on our side of the law.”

Oh, thank god.

“So not malicious, just persistent,” Matt translated.

“Who is he representing?” Foggy asked.

“He just said his ‘client,’” Kirsten said. “Don’t like that.”

The others agreed.

“What should I do?” Sam finally managed to squeak.

The room turned back to him.

“Not a damn thing,” Kirsten said brightly. “We’ve got you, Sammy. Let us handle it for now. When we wring more info out of the guy, we’ll know better what we’re working with, okay?”

Okay.

“Matt,” Foggy said.

Matt stood up abruptly and dragged Sam up with him.

“Home,” Matt announced. “Dogs. Food. Then emotional turmoil until sleep.”

Was that? A prescription? Doc?

“Onwards,” Matt said, shooing him. “This is enough for tonight. We’re off the clock. Go on. Shoo! March!”

Sam decided that he just never needed to sleep ever again and Hannah told him on her break that she’d support him wholeheartedly in that decision.

“I never should have let him call you,” she said.

Nope. Nope.

None of that.

“He’s a lawyer, not ICE,” Sam said. “In terms of worst case scenarios, this is far from the bottom of the barrel.”

“I know, but still,” Hannah said. “It’s just more people knowing. The more people who know, the more danger there is.”

As if Sam didn’t already know that--now wasn’t the time to be getting snippy with Hannah, though.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “I don’t even know what this guy’s client wants from me. If he knew Mom, then maybe he wants something from her will?”

“ _What_ will?” Hannah sighed.

“Exactly,” Sam said.

“What do we even tell them? There’s no will. She’s gone. No one cares. No one even knew she existed here,” Hannah said.

“Yeah, but what if they’re from Fuzhou?” Sam pointed out. “People knew Mom in Fuzhou. They knew she came here.”

“She didn’t talk to any of them,” Hannah said.

“We don’t actually know that,” Sam reminded her. “She told us fuck-all about folks back home.”

“You think she was talking to people behind our backs?” Hannah asked.

“More like, over our heads,” Sam sighed. “I know she talked to Grandma a few times.”

Hannah paused.

“When?” she asked.

Uuuuuh.

Well.

Sam remembered her once composing a long, drawn-out message to Grandma on WeChat, which had required her complete and utter fury and attention at the kitchen table a few years ago.

And he thought he remembered her scooping him up once while Hannah was a baby and napping; she’d made him put his hands into ink and then onto a piece of paper. He’d wanted to keep the paper because his fingerprints had been _so cool_ , but Mom said that it had to go to Fuzhou for Grandma. She’d put the paper in a cardboard box with a few other things that he hadn’t recognized at the time.

“Maybe Grandma died?” Hannah asked quietly. “Mom’s her oldest daughter, right? So maybe the folks are trying to find her or her husband?”

Maybe.

“But why hire an immigration lawyer?” Sam asked. “Everyone back home are farmers, Hannah. They’re poor as fuck. We think we’re poor? Think again. They can’t have the money to hire this guy—he’s some adjunct from _Columbia_.”

“Fuck it, fine. Maybe he’s a cousin,” Hannah said. “Someone who got out and made it big. Someone’s had to in our family, right?”

Pft.

No.

They were called ‘cycles’ of poverty for a reason.

“Who is it then?” Hannah snapped. “Who the fuck is it?”

Sam didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to find out.

It was weird to think of Kristen as his lawyer.

Matt and Foggy laughed when he mentioned it the next day. They said that they’d traded being Karen’s lawyer every month or so back in New York; it was fine.

Kirsten, on the other hand, was a magical human being who locked herself in her office and occasionally came out to lean against Sam’s shoulder sweetly and tell him that she needed pick his darling little brain.

He was dragged away from his desk via saccharine threats at least twice every hour that day. Matt and Foggy divided her cases among themselves for the time being. Sam heard Matt, who had lost his opportunity to go flirt with the judge, at work charming the other client he’d been previously forbidden from talking to on the phone in his office.

From the sounds of it, Matt was unraveling the story that she’d told Kirsten the other day like a cat scratching at a roll of toilet paper.

The fact that he wasn’t cackling maniacally as he went along was a testament to his professionalism.

Sam decided that he was going to focus in on his assigned cases. It was much better than thinking about the mounting panic that threatened to clog his throat every few hours.

“Sammy,” Kirsten sang around three in the afternoon. “Can I borrow you for a minute?”

No. Not this time.

Each round of questions was more invasive than the last, and Sam had a desk that needed him to be under it, hyperventilating. It was imperative to the desk’s wellbeing that he remain where he was.

“This is not healthy or helpful,” Kirsten sang, coming around and shoving his chair out of the way. She grabbed his wrist and dragged him out from his cave, then got both hands on his shoulders to march him back towards her office. Leilani and Achara gave him pitying looks as he and Kirsten passed them.

Kirsten let him press himself into the corner between the end of the bookcase and the wall to continue his temporarily postponed anxiety attack.

“Sam,” she said brightly when he was almost breathing at a normal pace again. “Are you okay to be working right now?”

Ahahahahaha.

No.

But he would admit that over his dead body, thanks.

So actually, yes. He was _perfectly_ fine.

“Do you want to work with Matt in his office?” Kirsten asked.

Sam both appreciated and didn’t appreciate the thought. He wasn’t a little kid. He didn’t have to sit at Sensei’s knee to behave and get work done—even if Kirsten was right that listening to Matt’s highly entertaining antics would be a great distraction from his own rapidly deteriorating mental stability.

“Silence tells me nothing,” Kirsten said.

“I’m okay,” Sam lied. “Did you happen to, uh? Find out anything more?”

Kirsten considered this and settled down behind her crowded desk. She gestured for him to sit across from her.

Sam decided abruptly that he didn’t want to. The client chairs in the firm were a terrible place to be. He didn’t want to join the masses in that traumatic event.

“Sammy,” Kirsten said.

He swallowed back the anxiety and forced himself to sit. Kirsten dropped her elbows on her desk and folded together her fingers. She sunk down behind them.

“You want to hear this from me or Matt?” she asked.

Matt was almost sure to be listening in. Sam hated that thought, too. And this question.

Nothing good could possibly come of this question.

“You,” he said.

If Matt gave him bad news at this moment, Sam would 100% start shaking and sobbing, and Matt would launch into DD-mode and Leilani and Achara didn’t need to witness that public embarrassment.

“Okay,” Kirsten said calmly. “So Mr. Guo is a damn good lawyer, you should know that first. And he was asked by a family friend to look into this case, okay? He’s not related to you or anything like that.”

Was that supposed to be comforting?

“Mr. Guo’s working pro bono,” Kirsten continued. “He’s representing a man from Chinatown who, on behalf of his father, has been trying to contact your mother for a while now.”

Oh?

Why?

Kirsten took in a deep breath.

“You sure you don’t want Matt?” she asked.

WELL, NOW HE DID.

“Sam. Breathe, buddy. Breathe,” Kirsten said.

Sam would _not_ , thanks very much. He’d done _plenty_ of breathing already that day and if the universe wanted him to pass out upon receipt of this news, then who the fuck was he to stand in its way?

“Okay, you stay there,” Kirsten said. “And just hold off that existential dread for two seconds, alright?”

She left and closed the door firmly behind her.

Sam ripped out his phone and started texting Hannah that he was about to perish and he loved her and everything was going to be okay. He’d make a will and leave all his savings to her and he’d been writing all the family recipes down and—

It wasn’t fair how grounding Matt was.

It wasn’t _fair_.

“In. 1, 2, 3. And out. 1, 2, 3,” Matt directed over Sam’s head.

It was a little hard to follow the instructions all crunched up against Matt’s lapels and pocket, but the feeling of a pen pressing to Sam’s cheek was a little comforting in itself, somehow.

“Atta boy,” Matt encouraged. “One more time. In. 1, 2, 3. And out. 1, 2, 3.”

Fuck, man.

The world was awful.

Sam didn’t want to hear this news.

“You think you can sit?” Matt asked him. “Here, sit with me.”

Sam hadn’t wanted Mom this badly since Muse. Just her smell would be enough. He didn’t think that was too much to ask.

“There you go,” Matt said soothingly.

Matt didn’t have the right smell. He didn’t smell like sharp like limes or cleaning solution or the ever so light waft of something powdery and floral on weekends. His shoulders didn’t slip off each side of his neck like the sides of a mountain, and he didn’t rock back and forth with Sam’s cheek against his collarbone.

“I gotcha, slugger.”

Mom never called him ‘slugger.’ She called him Sam. Samuel. Baby. Loud One.

She called him ‘whose son is this?’ when he made a bad joke.

She was always telling him that if he didn’t stand up straight, his back would hurt worse than it already did and he’d end up with a permanent hunch.

“Sam,” Kirsten restarted carefully, again behind her desk. “Mr. Guo’s client is claiming to be your half-brother.”

No, he wasn’t.

Mom would have said something. Mom with her warm, dry hands and the smell of something powdery and floral on weekends—Mom with her warm, dry hands and her—

Mom.

 _Mom_.

Please don’t make me do this alone.

“He says that his father was recently naturalized.”

Please, Mom.

“And he’s saying that his father has been reaching out to his ex-wife, who he believes immigrated illegally to the United States with what he has described as ‘a small boy who goes by the name Samuel Chung.’”

No, no, no.

Just.

No.

“It’s a lie,” Sam felt himself choke. “I don’t have a dad. I’ve never had a dad. I’ve never even met—seen—he never—cared--”

Matt took Sam’s hand away from his face and put a tissue in it. He hadn’t even realized that he’d started leaking everywhere.

Kirsten sighed.

“This man wants to help you get citizenship,” she said almost sadly.

It was a fucking _lie_.

A fucking unfair, bullshit, horrible _lie_.

A sick joke.

A cruel, cruel, cruel, sick joke.

“I can’t imagine what you’re feeling, kiddo,” Kirsten said. “But Guo sounds legit. He went to law school, actually, with this guy claiming to be your half-brother. He says that he doesn’t mean to intrude, but that he’d recently done an oral history project with the person claiming to be your father, and this guy--he’s just, from the sounds of it, really guilty for what happened to you and your mom.”

He could fuck off.

He could die.

Sam didn’t care.

Sam didn’t want his charity.

 _He’d_ done this to them. From the start.

“He left us,” he managed to choke. “Left Mom. He’d lied to her. He went through this whole marriage ceremony and didn’t tell her even _once_ that he already had a family in the city and then when he got bored and tired with our village and our family, _he_ ’s the one who just left.”

Sam hadn’t told anyone this before. Mom had only told him the whole thing after he’d turned eighteen. She’d wanted him to understand, fully and completely, why she’d made the choices that she had. She’d told him that she didn’t regret any of them; that they were her choices and she’d made them. She’d told him, smoothing hair away from his face, that he and Hannah were the products of her mistakes and, despite that, she loved them both more than she could ever say.

She’d begged him not to make her mistakes again. She told him never to get a woman pregnant and then leave them. She’d told him never to cheat on someone or lie to them or tell them that he loved them when he didn’t.

He’d promised her that he wouldn’t.

He hadn’t broken that promise. He never intended to.

Ever.

That was how babies ended up in countries they weren’t born in, unaware of how invisible they were to the world.

That was how people like Mom spent their whole lives in poverty.

People lying, people leaving, and people refusing to take responsibility for their behavior was why Sam would never make more of himself, could never go to a hospital, and had worked his whole goddamn life.

It wasn’t the root of those things for all people, undocumented or impoverished, he knew this. He respected that.

But in his case, lying and leaving were the elements of snowballs. Giant, fat ones that rolled through city streets, picking up more instances of lies and leaving and lies and leaving until Sam’s whole life felt like it was nothing but a collection of those things.

He didn’t exist.

Muse was right.

Sam was just some long-term art exhibit.

A sculpture. Some kind of think-piece on the theme of Consequences.

“Matt,” Kirsten said.

“I got ‘im,” Matt’s voice said, closer by than Sam remembered his face being. “Hey, Sammy. You’re okay. Here, give me that hand. I don’t like you holding your wrist like that. You’re gonna bruise.”

Matt was warm. Always warm.

Why couldn’t—

It was stupid.

It was so stupid.

But life was a fucking cruel-ass joke, anyways, so what the fuck? What was one more dream shattered and shoved in Sam’s face, huh?

Why couldn’t Matt have been his dad?

Why not?

What was so wrong with that?

Sam had more in common with him than almost anyone he could think of.

Sure, Matt was white beyond words--as Irish-American as they came. Matt didn’t understand Chinese culture. He didn’t have dark hair or almond eyes. He didn’t get called slurs in the street and he didn’t look at his job prospects and see ‘restaurant worker,’ ‘martial art teacher,’ or ‘janitor/laundry guy’ listed in front of him.

But Matt felt more like a dad than anyone else Mom had ever brought home. Matt listened to Sam and did shit that he didn’t actually care about with him and encouraged him, even when he didn’t understand a damn thing Sam was saying.

He stood tall. He was kind. He was brutal. He was funny and charming and caring and protective. And he was all those things even as people spat on him in so many different ways for being blind.

Sam wanted to be like that.

He wanted to stand tall and be strong. He didn’t mind being a bit blind if it meant that he could be who Matt was for him for other people.

Wasn’t that what a parent was supposed to be?

An example? A mentor?

Someone who doesn’t leave their fuckin’ kids to rot in a wasting village, only to reach out twenty-odd years later with an olive branch of basic human treatment?

What kind of deal was this?

Did this fuck even realize what he was holding out to Sam?

A glimmer of hope and human rights at the cost of years upon years and layers upon layers of trauma?

Did he even realize that Sam couldn’t say no? That saying no was a death sentence?

Hadn’t Sam lived through enough? Hadn’t _Mom_ lived through enough?

“Come on, Ace. Let’s go take a walk,” Matt said. “I think we need a bit of air.”

Matt untangled himself from Sam and made him breathe with him a little more before telling him to go get his bag and to wash his face.

Sam followed the directive on autopilot. He didn’t look at Leilani or Achara when he swept past them. He didn’t want their pity. He didn’t want anyone’s pity.

He wanted to leave.

To go back to New York.

To be with Hannah and to be with Mom and to just cry this out with people who would get it.

He wanted Mom’s dry, warm hands the scent of something powdery and floral and he’d _never_ get that again.

He had Daredevil.

That’s what he fucking had.

So Daredevil would have to do.

His face was a disaster when he pulled it up from the sink to the mirror. He didn’t see red very well these days, but his eyes were dripping with it. It brought back memories of the feeling of blood flowing from them in the wake of Muse’s fingers.

He traced the phantom warmth with his own fingers and thought about Muse.

Thought about consequences.

“Sam.”

He turned off the water and grabbed a few paper towels to mop up his face.

“Just a second,” he grated out in the direction of the door.

Matt’s idea of a walk was a bus-ride in the direction of home, except they didn’t go home. Matt kept his fingers cupped around Sam’s elbow and, once they’d gotten off the bus a stop too early—with no end of staring, probably due to a mix of Sam’s puffy face and Matt’s stick—Matt took them on an abrupt turn towards the park.

Sam left himself be guided that way.

He didn’t feel like screaming or crying anymore.

He just felt tired.

Used.

His eyes burned around their rims every time he closed them and even though his breath felt easier, it still felt kind of stuck in the back of his throat.

He could barely even feel Matt’s fingers anymore.

The park’s teals and greens—eucalyptus trees and ferns and grasses bursting up and curling around the edges of the paved trail—did little to soften the feeling of being choked.

“Teach,” he finally said after a way walking.

“Student,” Matt said evenly back.

“Why me?” Sam asked. “Why does this shit always happen to me?”

Matt didn’t say anything, too busy tapping his stick carefully along the path. Sam watched the tip of it scrape past gravel and bits of bark.

“Do you want a religious answer or a social one?” Matt asked.

“I just want _an_ answer,” Sam said.

Matt hummed.

“When I was a kid, I used to ask God the same thing,” Matt said. “’Why me? Why did you blind me? Didn’t me and Dad have enough shit to deal with? Did we just not matter to you in that moment? Did we do something wrong?’ It was stupid, obviously. Of course we did something wrong; my pops made deals with the mob. I benefitted from those deals. I egged Dad on in making them in future, whether I knew I was doing that or not.”

Ouch.

That was.

Yeah. Pretty much on the money.

Mom had done something wrong. Really wrong.

They never should have overstayed the visas.

“But that doesn’t mean that what happened to us was our fault, necessarily,” Matt continued. “Everything I learned in school told me that Dad made deals with the mob because he was too busy trying to make ends meet with limited means of social mobility. Life was shit because of a freak accident, but also because we live in a country that believes that medical care is a privilege, not a right. The world punishes me, not because I’ve done anything wrong, but because my body doesn’t fit the type that people are used to seeing and communicating with. There are socio-economic reasons. Issues of accessibility on every level of those reasons. There’s probably some part of it that might be God or might be fate or maybe even the devil--but mostly, kiddo, my life’s been shit because of a load of fuckin’ politics.”

Man. Yeah.

Yeah, Sam felt that one deep.

“Your life is especially shit because you got politics on top of your politics,” Matt said. “But that has fuck-all to do with you, as a person—as an individual. You know this already, of course.”

Of course he did. It was kind of nice to hear it laid out like that, though. Comforting, kind of.

Almost like the greens.

They were trying to be comforting.

Matt was trying to be comforting.

“I wish you were my dad, Matt,” he admitted, far more emptily than he’d ever wanted to.

Matt lifted his head. Sam was too tired to react to his alarm or discomfort or whatever it was that that gesture conveyed.

“I don’t know this guy and all he’s done is kick me in the fucking chest. And even if he’s trying to make things right, it feels like I don’t have a choice,” Sam said. “Mom would say that it doesn’t matter. That he never mattered. She’d tell me to do what I had to, to get citizenship. But like—”

His throat was closing.

It was closing with the smell of something powdery and—and flora—and--

“I don’t like to use people as props,” he said.

Matt’s fingers flexed a bit against his elbow.

“I know what this lawyer is going to say,” Sam said around the creak he could no longer control. “He’s going to say that for this to work, I’ll have to go back—to China, I mean. I’ll have to go and do the paperwork and wait for an interview and get a visa and wait for another interview and on and on and on. _Years._ It’s gonna take years.”

He couldn’t even remember Grandma’s face.

Auntie—he’d seen her once? Maybe twice? Did she look like Mom?

Did she smell like her?

“Is it worth it?” Matt asked him.

“I don’t know,” Sam said with that feeling of blood on his eyes again. “I can’t—I’d have to get a flight to China without getting detained. The chances of that happening with international travel are—we both know they’re shit. We _all_ know they’re shit. And if I get detained and people find out, then that’s it. That’s me done. They’ll deport me and I’ll never be able to get a visa or come back.”

Matt’s stick found a pothole and surprised him. Sam pulled him gently to the side to go around it.

“Are there other options?” Matt asked.

“The other option is to forge documents,” Sam sighed. “Or to make a contact in China and pretend, somehow, that they’re me when they do all the applications and interviews. And that’s just making more and more people complicit. That’s more lies. And that’s what got me here to begin with.”

His throat was almost impossible to swallow through now.

God? Was he having an allergic reaction?

“Sorry, I missed the part in this story where four-year-old Sammy lied to Border Control,” Matt said suddenly.

Sam wanted to roll his eyes, but they hurt too bad and he was trying not to panic over the fact that he couldn’t swallow.

“I didn’t go home,” he said. “The visa clearly said—”

“Could you read at this point?” Matt interrupted.

And the world seemed to stop.

Could he—

Could he read?

Well.

No.

“Interesting,” Matt said.

“That’s not the point,” Sam said. “Maybe Mom lied first, but I lied after her. I told everyone I was a citizen. Employers. Clients. People in the street—I lie all the time. I lied to you. I made you think—”

Matt stopped walking and turned towards him.

“Made me think what, Sammy?” he asked.

Sam couldn’t swallow.

“I lied to you,” he said.

“That’s not what I asked you,” Matt said.

It didn’t matter how. Everything Sam did, every time anyone looked at him he was lying. Pretending. A fake a—

“Sam. I can’t look.”

The tears started blurring Sam’s vision. They clung to his eyelashes and no amount of blinking could clear them from Matt standing before him.

“Maybe it’s me who can’t see,” Sam whispered.

Matt’s shoulders softened.

“Sammy. Your existence isn’t a lie,” he said. “You’re not some pile of deeds. You’re a person. A brain on legs. A sentient decision-maker. And guess what? It’s not a moral failing on your part that you’re undocumented--invisible---you’re the one who told _me_ this. You tell me this every day in all kinds of ways. Why are you—why are you going back on it now?”

Because—

Because—

Okay, no. Actually, it was kind of bullshit.

Even the tears took a step back to appreciate it.

“You’re right,” Sam said.

His head wanted to hang. He almost let it.

“No, _you’re_ right,” Matt told him, “Why’s the world changed because some guy you don’t know from Adam’s offered you an Ace with no other cards? The world ain’t poker. The world’s a pile of step ladders all stacked on top of each other. It’s not enough to have a trump card. You’ve got to build your way up to these kinds of things.”

That…made sense.

“I’ll be straight with you, Sam,” Matt said. “This lawyer’s good. He’s probably got good advice. But you’re good, too. And this is _your_ reality. You know your options and you know the dangers. And you’re so _smart._ Whatever decision you decide to make will be a risk, but I have complete faith in you to weigh all the factors and to understand all the nuances here.”

Sam waited.

It sounded like Matt wasn’t done. Like he’d cut himself off before voicing a new thought.

But Matt turned his face away from him. It made Sam frown.

“But?” he asked.

“There’s no ‘buts,’” Matt said harshly.

“If there’s no ‘but,’ then why won’t you look at me?” Sam asked.

Matt’s lips twitched on the immediate rebuttal that he always used.

‘I can’t look.’

‘I can’t see.’

They twitched and then Matt’s jaw tensed and he tried to say something but stopped.

It was like he deflated.

His shoulders sloped lopsidedly and he lowered his face to somewhere into the space between Sam’s elbow and hip.

“The only ‘but’ is selfish—on my part,” he said.

Sam blinked.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “If I get citizenship, then I’m not your problem anymore, Teach. You don’t have to, you know, stand guard like you do. I could—I mean, _you_ could get an actually qualified paralegal. Someone who knows what they’re doing and maybe after a while I could go to college or something or—”

“What if it doesn’t work, though?” Matt interrupted. “You said it yourself—for this to work, you’d have to go back to Fuzhou. What if you get detained? What if your visa gets rejected? What if you can’t come home?”

What? Well. That would be shit then.

“Yeah,” Matt said bitterly, “It fuckin’ would. Because I can’t protect you if you’re in China, Sam. I can’t make sure you ain’t passed out in the street and that someone hasn’t cracked your head open on the walk home. And I can’t know that you’ll make enough for rent and food. And I can’t train you or—”

He cut himself off.

Sam’s throat hurt again.

“I just want you to be safe, Sammy,” Matt finally said—too wobbly. Upsettingly wobbly. “What if—I’m not—what if I die before you get back?”

Oh, no.

Teach _, no._

Don’t say that.

“What if I die?” Matt said. “I can’t live forever. And I don’t know who would help Foggy and Kirsten and the firm and the dogs and the thought of not having you there one more time before I go is—”

Sam couldn’t listen to this anymore.

It was too much.

“I—Sam? Oh, kiddo. I’m sorry. This ain’t about me. I didn’t mean it like that. I’m so sorry.”

It was beyond too much.

Sam couldn’t hold all of this. His arms weren’t big enough. He kept crying at the drop of a hat. All he did these days was cry.

Matt wrapped Sam up in his arms.

Weak.

Sam felt so weak.

Matt’s chin on top of his head didn’t do much good this time, especially because Sam could feel his jaw threatening to shake, too.

God help them, they were a mess.

“I wish,” Matt said over his head, fully shaking now and gravelly in a way that Daredevil never was. “Sometimes, I wish I could just give you my Dad, Sam. I think you woulda loved him. I think he’d’ve been confused as fuck at the start, but I think he’d’ve loved you, too.”

Sam couldn’t be buried any further into Matt’s chest. There was nowhere else to go without going through him.

“I don’t want your dad,” Sam choked out. “I want _you_.”

“I know,” Matt said, forcing himself to breathe evenly. “I know. But I’m not—I’m not good enough for you.”

Lies.

“Truths,” Matt said. “But on the off-chance that you wouldn’t mind that. I’d still have you as my kid in a heartbeat, you know that? I’d be—whatever you needed me to be--I’d be that for you, you know that?”

Fuck.

God.

FUCK.

“I can’t cry anymore,” Sam mumbled into Matt’s shoulder. “’M only 60% water.”

Matt’s laugh was muffled in Sam’s own hair. His arms squeezed a little and then relaxed enough for Sam to pull back. It was shitty looking up at Matt’s own reddened face.

He’d never seen the guy cry.

Scream. Shout. Curse. Hit people and throw things? He’d seen that.

But cry?

Never.

It made things more real than they had any right to be.

“I’ll be your kid,” Sam told him, sniffing. “If you’re cool with being complicit in harboring an illegal alien.”

Matt’s lips twitched in an effort towards a smile.

“You know me,” he said. “If there’s a fence to sit on, I’m there.”

It wasn’t funny, but Sam was a little hysterical at that point. You know, from the day-long anxiety attack and the dehydration. So he laughed anyways.

“I don’t wanna meet this guy,” he admitted. “I don’t want to know his name or any of these _brothers_ or whoever they are. I never needed them. I already have my own family.”

Matt ran fingers through his hair.

“Give it a try,” he said. “If for nothing else, your own closure. Say what you need to, to his face.”

Sam frowned and thought about it.

“Okay,” he said. He wiped at his nose. “I guess that’s fair.”

Foggy got home two hours later to what he called ‘a mountain of feelings so tall he would never see the summit.’

This was Foggy-speak for ‘You guys are disgustingly dramatic.’

He ordered showers for everyone and nothing but talk of baseball for the next 48 hours—no, 58. He needed the extra ten to be unconscious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one fucking _hurt._


	3. get off the train

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Samuel. I’m sorry,” he said in Mandarin.
> 
> “I don’t want your sorry,” Sam heard himself snap.

Sam was 100% certain that Matt told Foggy about their conversation, which meant that Kirsten’s sappy looks the next morning were entirely Foggy’s doing.

Sam scowled and reminded her, per Foggy’s orders, they weren’t allowed to talk about anything but baseball.

This was punishment, honestly. Sam didn’t know shit about sports. He’d heard Captain America say ‘So, how about them Dodgers?’ a few times and had decided to go with that as an answer to any sports-based interrogative thrown his way. But Foggy caught on quickly and had informed Sam that he was fucking that one up. It wasn’t Cap that asked about them Dodgers. It was the Falcon, and he did it purely to watch Cap and Sergeant Barnes lose their fucking gourds.

Sam had proceeded to make the rookie mistake of asking why the old guys were so weird about the fucking Dodgers.

Foggy stared.

Matt made sad, soft whale noises.

And now Sam was being tested on the history and rules of baseball.

The especially disgusting part was that he had to look up the rules, study them, and then watch actual baseball footage to understand what was happening with them.

He asked Kirsten if there was a precedent for a sport to be made illegal. She declined to answer, and instead told him that he could like any team he chose except the Yankees.

This was not helpful.

Kirsten also told him that she she’d agreed to a meeting with Mr. Guo. She told him to dress however he wanted. It would be a morning meeting in the upcoming days.

Sam didn’t like Mr. Guo.

He knew, logically, that this guy was an ally to his community, both the documented and undocumented parts of it, but he still didn’t like him. He was too clean. His hair was too neat. His tie looked like dried blood and his shoes clacked when he walked.

Mr. Guo seemed to have picked up on the vibes Sam was trying to ward him back with.

“Oh,” he said pleasantly. “You’re younger than I thought you’d be.”

It said on the damn piece of paper in his hands at this very moment that Sam was 24.

“You father made you sound—”

“Don’t call him that,” Sam said.

Mr. Guo cut himself off.

“Apologies,” he said.

‘Fuck off,’ Sam wanted to say back. But Kirsten put a hand on his arm that meant ‘shut up or there will be hell to pay.’

He shifted away from the hand and Kirsten let it drop to her side.

“Just before we start,” Mr. Guo said, “I just wanted to make sure you would be okay with your—uh. For Mr. Chung to translate for his father.”

Sam stiffened.

He hadn’t agreed to the half-brother being present. Kirsten lifted an eyebrow.

“I think we’d be okay with that,” she said, glancing at Sam for confirmation. “So long as he is only translating.”

Alternatively, Sam could just climb onto the table and scream in Mandarin. Surely that would serve the same purpose?

“I’m afraid I don’t speak Chinese, though,” Kirsten said, “So if he or you could translate what Mr. Chung says for myself, that would be immensely helpful. Otherwise, Sam might be able to do it?”

“Of course,” Sam said, squinting at Mr. Guo. He cocked his head.

“Too bright?” he asked, waving at the window behind him.

“My client is visually impaired,” Kirsten said smoothly. “It’s a bit dim in here for him, actually.”

Mr. Guo’s eyebrows shot up.

“Oh,” he said. “My apologies, we can have the text enlarged on the paperwork if that would be helpful?”

Okay, so maybe he wasn’t the complete worst.

Kirsten deferred to Sam.

“It’s fine,” Sam said. “Just send me a digital copy so I can review it later. Can we get started? We don’t have all day.”

Mr. Guo nodded. Sam decided to give him a little more respect. He’d come out all the way from New York and he’d helped arrange for his clients to come, too. He’d even written a letter of apology to Hannah for scaring her.

He didn’t seem overtly malicious, clacky-shoes and blood-tie aside.

But then again, Stilt-man didn’t appear overtly malicious, and he’d still killed people on his trample-fests through the city.

Kirsten seated Sam next to her at the table in Mr. Guo’s contact’s conference room. Mr. Guo left them to go peek his head through the door. He slipped out, apparently to brief his clients on what would happen next. Sam could imagine him telling those other two that Sam was visually impaired and that he’d agreed to the half-brother translating for the old man.

He set his jaw.

“Ease up,” Kirsten told him. “They aren’t here as a threat.”

“I am, though,” Sam whispered to her.

“You aren’t,” Kirsten whispered back. “I’ve seen Yorkshire terriers more threatening than you.”

Wh—

The door opened. Kirsten stood up abruptly, and Sam followed her without thinking. Mr. Guo came back in with a tall (are you _serious_?) black-haired man with artfully mussed hair. His lapels were long and his shirt was ironed and artfully unbuttoned at the collar and he stood beside a middle-aged man who was—

Honestly?

Fine.

Surreally fine.

He was plain. Graying hair, sloping eyebrows, a bit of a paunch. He looked like an office worker in that painfully white button up and tie. The younger guy’s grey-blue jacket and its long lapels seemed almost too fashionable in contrast. They didn’t look related. Sam wondered if the younger guy looked more like his mom or if maybe the old man had been a real looker in his youth.

“Samuel,” Mr. Guo said, “Can I please introduce you to Mr. Hui Chung and his father, Fei Hong Chung.”

Sam held himself still.

Fei Hong stared at him in awe. His eyes were watery.

“Samuel?” he asked with a rasp.

Sam felt himself recoiling and forced himself to stay still.

“Sam,” he corrected after a beat.

“You’re so big,” Fei Hong said in Mandarin. “My god, you’ve grown so big.”

Okay, first of all: Sam hadn’t. He was a pipsqueak compared to Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome over there. That guy was at least 5’ 11” and Sam had never felt those missing 5 inches more acutely. He caught himself squeezing his shoulders in towards his chest and shoved them back spitefully.

Second of all, and more importantly, he didn’t want to talk to Fei Hong. Like, ideally, ever. He thought he’d made that pretty clear to both lawyers present. Kirsten had told him that he didn’t have to say a damn thing if he didn’t want to and Mr. Guo had said that he understood.

And true to form, it seemed like he actually did.

He cut in before Fei Hong could say anything more and told him that Sam was fairly uncomfortable at the present time and that it would be best if he, Mr. Guo, did most of the talking for now. Afterwards, if both parties agreed to it, then there would be time for a chat.

Sam silently hoped there would be.

He may not have wanted to talk _with_ Fei Hong, but he sure as fuck wanted him to listen.

Mom hadn’t gotten her moment to get her own back from this guy. Sam had a torch to carry here.

“Sam?” Mr. Guo said once everyone was seated around the long conference table. “Is that what you prefer to be called?”

“Yes,” Sam said.

“Okay, well. Sam, Ms. McDuffie tells me that she’s explained the circumstances of this meeting to you,” Mr. Guo said. “Did you have any questions about those?”

“I have logistical questions,” Sam said as evenly as he could manage.

Mr. Guo seemed surprised.

“Oh,” he said. “So you’ve done research into your options?”

Sam studied him.

“You work at Columbia University, right?” he asked.

Mr. Guo blinked.

“Yes,” he said. “Sorry, are you familiar with the campus?”

“I worked there,” Sam said. “My friends Emmanuel and Carlos clean your building.”

There was a bit of a pause.

“I was a janitor for four years,” Sam translated for him.

“Oh, really,” Mr. Guo said awkwardly. “And you developed an interest in law?”

“Engineering,” Sam said, looking specifically at Fei Hong.

The half-brother leaned over to translate for him. 

“I imagine that studying is difficult given your circumstances,” Mr. Guo said. “Your—er, Fei Hong hopes that there is something he can do to support you in those endeavors. But why don’t we hold off on discussing that for now. I’m sorry to hear that your mother recently passed—”

“My client would like proof of Mr. Chung’s relation to him,” Kirsten butted in. “Let’s establish that first and go from there, if you don’t mind?”

Mr. Guo withdrew and agreed that that would probably be best. He translated this for Fei Hong and Fei Hong perked up and stopped staring at Sam like he was some kind of bizarre flower arrangement to produce a manila envelope. It was tied closed with a reddish string. He unwound it and pulled a few different documents out of it, which he handed to Mr. Guo.

“I don’t know how familiar you are with Chinese documentation having grown up in the States,” Mr. Guo told Sam.

“Enough,” Sam said. “Can I have them, please?”

Mr. Guo laid them out for him.

One was a certificate of birth. Sam was familiar with this one. Mom had kept a copy in her safe. She’d never sat down with him to explain it and he’d never taken the initiative to explore it, though so it felt a little foreign in his hands. The paper was thicker than he’d expected it to be and sure enough, it listed his date of birth and his birth weight and that was Mom’s name there. ‘Chung Fei Hong’ sat heavy on the line across from Mom’s.

Sam set the piece down.

It was an old piece of paper. Clearly the old man had kept this.

It pissed Sam off.

Mr. Guo showed him a few other documents from the collection in his hands, which listed Sam as part of Fei Hong’s household. One listed him for four years after he and Mom had moved to the States.

Sam handed them back.

“Are you happy with that?” Kirsten asked him.

He clenched his teeth and nodded.

“So you believe, then, that Mr. Chung is your father?” Mr. Guo asked him. Sam looked away from him and met Fei Hong’s gaze.

“You may be my father,” he said. “But you’re not my dad.”

There was a pause.

“By that, you mean that Mr. Chung has not had a prominent role in your upbringing?” Mr. Guo asked.

“I mean,” Sam said in Mandarin, “That you’re not my _dad_. We both know this. Yes?”

The old man’s shoulders rose and fell and he tipped his head forward in a nod.

“Samuel. I’m sorry,” he said in Mandarin.

“I don’t want your sorry,” Sam heard himself snap.

“Sammy,” Kirsten warned.

Her hand found the back of his sweater and pulled him back into the seat that he hadn’t realized he’d launched himself up from.

Her hand felt like nothing compared to the heat that was billowing like scalding air through Sam’s sternum.

It kept telling him that if he stopped now, there would be no other opportunity.

This was the first time he had been visible in 20 years. Who knew how long it would last.

“My mom fought tooth and nail to raise me and my sister in this country,” Sam said almost faster than he could breathe, “She worked so much that I barely saw her for more than two or three hours a day. She worked three jobs—menial fuckin’ labor, _hard_ labor--some years to make ends meet. And clearly you knew where she was—where _we_ were. And you never reached out and you never apologized to her or tried to make things right when she needed that help most.”

“Sammy,” Kirsten said, pulling again.

“I will _never_ get to study at a university because of what you did,” Sam said over her. “I will _always_ be the janitor while your other son gets to be the student. He’ll wear grey suits and I’ll wear jumpsuits and sweater vests and a fake-ass smile for a load of customers who know they’re better than me for the rest of my life. I have spent the last year living in hostels, shit hotels, and _out on the fucking street_ , week to week, day to day, because of _your_ actions twenty years ago. I can’t even go to the hospital because of you. Do you understand how that makes me feel towards you?”

“Sam,” Kirsten snapped. “Reel it in.”

UGH.

Fine.

He wasn’t done. But fine. His voice was shaking anyways.

“Sam,” Mr. Guo said cautiously, “You are understandably upset. And Mr. Chung doesn’t begrudge you those emotions. But he didn’t ask your mother to emigrate, please understand that. And he is reaching out now with—”

Oh, is _that_ how they’re playing it?

“We left China because you left my Mom,” Sam hissed at Fei Hong. “And everyone in our village thought something was wrong with her--so wrong that her husband up and left without so much as a goodbye, when _actually_ you already had a family in the city and you’d just married her out of pressure from your parents.”

“Sam,” Kirsten said. “Settle down. Now.”

Okay, okay.

He forced himself to lean back in his seat.

There was a long pause.

“Why don’t we just get all of it out?” Mr. Guo said. “Is that okay?”

Kirsten winced.

“You don’t want that,” she said.

Mr. Guo glanced over towards Fei Hong and his son and then turned slightly back.

“Actually,” he said. “I think we do.”

That was permission. Sam didn’t need Kirsten to give him the all clear for that. He’d taken enough notes in these kinds of meetings to know.

“You should have just told her that you had a long-term partner in the city,,” he spat at Fei Hong. “And you shouldn’t have gotten her pregnant and left her to figure things out on her own. You had the power in that moment, Mr. Chung. And you chose to use it to benefit you and you’re still choosing to use it to benefit you--because this? This, right here? This is a way for you to clear your conscious. But this, for me? This is a trade of my dignity for my life.”

It didn’t feel good to say all of that like Sam thought it was going to.

It just made him angrier. The way that Fei Hong’s son was watching him with a sneer made him want to slam a fist against the table hard enough to clear it from his face for good.

“I take responsibility.”

Everything stopped. Froze.

Even Mr. Guo turned slowly towards Fei Hong in surprise.

“I do,” Fei Hong said in broken English. He switched back to Mandarin to explain. “I was young and immature, Samuel. You’re right. I was thinking selfishly about my own problems and that has caused you and your mother a life of hardship. I should have tried harder to find you two and to make amends and to ensure that you had the same opportunities my other children have had. And for that, I take responsibility. And I apologize.”

Sam hadn’t heard that right.

He couldn’t have.

No one ever apologized to him.

Not to him.

Never to him.

It didn’t feel real. It felt almost rehearsed—it probably was, actually. It was almost like Fei Hong had been thinking about it for a long time.

Like he meant it.

Sam’s swallowed hard against his closing throat.

“I think we need a break,” Kirsten told Mr. Guo.

“I think you’re right. Let’s take maybe fifteen?” Mr. Guo offered.

Kirsten’s hugs were pretty good as far as things went, but this one didn’t really make Sam feel any better.

“This is a good thing,” she told him.

“I know,” Sam managed to gasp. “I know, I just? I thought—maybe I thought there would be more of a fight? I just—God. I feel so bad. Kirsten, I feel awful. I shouldn’t have said those things, he’s actually trying—oh my god—”

“You know what we call this?” Kirsten asked him as he slid down the wall and dropped his forehead into his knees.

“Spiraling?” he asked them.

“Got it in one,” Kirsten said. “He needed to hear it, bud. And you needed to say it. And me and Guo haven’t had to break up any fights, so this might _seem_ messy and frustrating, but as far as family reunions go, it sure as hell isn’t the worst one I’ve ever arbitrated.”

Sam couldn’t bring himself to assess whether or not that was a comforting statement.

“I don’t like Hui,” he said.

“Who?” Kirsten asked.

“The son,” Sam said. “He looks down at me.”

“Ah,” Kirsten said. “Yeah, he looks like he’s holding in a sneeze. That can’t be healthy. Let it loose, rocketman.”

Sam almost found it in himself to laugh.

The fifteen minutes were up.

Kirsten had extracted a promise from Sam for no more Matt-level theatrics. For now, anyways. Those could wait until the end of the day.

They returned to the conference room with Kirsten putting the butt of her horrible cold Starbucks frappuccino glass against the back of Sam’s neck when he wasn’t looking.

Mr. Guo arrived in surprisingly good spirits for a guy who’d just been sitting between some serious family drama, Sam thought. He was obviously besotted with Kirsten, as most men who sat across from her rapidly became, so that probably helped, but besides that, Sam got the feeling that Kirsten wasn’t actually lying when she said that things were going pretty well.

Which meant that it was kind of up to him to own up to some of his own mistakes here.

It sucked. Like, a lot.

But it—

It was like this: Sam had never wanted charity. He wanted justice.

And justice sometimes looked like admitting when you’d done something not great, even when you had the right to do so.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout,” he told Fei Hong in Mandarin, unable to meet his eye this time. “I just didn’t know if you were doing this because you wanted to or you felt like you had to.”

Fei Hong put a hand on his heart.

“You are a sweet boy,” he said in English. “Very respectful and protective of your mother. She raised you well.”

Sam’s guts squirmed a bit.

“So, Sam,” Mr. Guo said. “I know emotions are still a bit high, but do you think we could switch gears and talk about some potential options for you? Have you ever spoken to an immigration lawyer?”

Ahahahaha.

Hell no.

Did he look like an idiot?

Mr. Guo laughed.

“We’re not so bad,” he said, “I promise we’re friendlier than the crew you’ve shacked up with currently.”

“It’s not a high bar,” Sam told him.

Kirsten threw an arm over his shoulder and shook him fondly as a threat.

“We’re the friendliest lawyers on this side of the bay, Mr. Guo,” she said tenderly.

“I have no doubts,” Mr. Guo said. “But I do specialize in this area, Sam, so let me explain how your father’s situation changes yours.”

Oh boy. Here we go.

“Save me,” Sam whispered to Kirsten.

Sam didn’t expect much change and he got what he expected. Mr. Guo told him that any legal action presently was risky and Sam was just a bit too old now for things to be slightly easier.

Most of his options required that he would have to go back to China to wait for a visa.

The rest of the information Mr. Guo had for him was about benefits and risk management, a lot of which Sam already knew, but he appreciated the effort and some of the specifics.

“It’s up to you,” Mr. Guo said. “If you can get to China safely, then we will be happy to help you fill out the paperwork to get your documentation. But, like I said, there is no guarantee how long that would take and how long you would be barred from reentry if you were detained.”

Yeah.

That’s pretty much what Sam had expected.

“Thank you,” he eventually said. “For real. But I think I’m okay where I am right now.”

Mr. Guo’s eyebrows went up.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Sam said, tugging at his sleeves. “I, uh. Got a NYC ID card and that’s made things a lot easier lately, and I’ve got my job and a place to stay so. I’m doing okay, actually.”

“So there’s nothing you need right now? You don’t have any questions?” Mr. Guo asked.

Sam shook his head.

He studiously didn’t look at anyone else in the room. He knew they were all staring at him.

“Is there anything we can do to help you?” Fei Hong’s son finally spoke up.

Sam refused to look at him or think of him as ‘brother.’

“I’m good,” he said.

“Are you—”

“I’m _good_ ,” he reiterated. “Believe it or not, I’ve been living like this for a minute. So I’m good. Thank you, though. It’s uh. Very kind of you.”

An uncomfortable silence filed into the conference room.

“Well,” Mr. Guo said, dispelling it. “If you’re happy with that, then I think we’re happy. And Sam, if you are comfortable with it, I think Fei Hong would be interested in getting to know you.”

Fei Hong nodded in agreement.

Sam…didn’t think he was there yet. He apologized, but Fei Hong said he wasn’t offended.

“You don’t know me,” he said. “I only knew you when you were very small. You probably don’t remember.”

“Mom told me you were dead until I was fourteen,” Sam told him out flat.

That stopped him in his tracks.

“I see,” he said.

“She didn’t have a whole lot of nice things to say,” Sam admitted gently.

“I see,” Fei Hong said again, more resigned this time. “Does Lu Wei—does she have a grave?”

Eugh.

Nope.

For so many reasons. None of which this guy needed to know.

“I’m sure if you talk to her, she’ll hear you,” Sam told him. “And then maybe she’ll stop haunting me for about twenty minutes.”

Fei Hong laughed this time. It wasn’t the worst sound. Sam flicked eyes over to Hui and found him looking like he’d eaten something unexpectedly sour.

Well, you can’t win ‘em all.

“I’m going to explode,” Sam told Kirsten. “Can we end this now?”

“Roger that,” Kirsten said. “Gentlemen, it was lovely to meet you.”

Sam loved Kirsten and appreciated her, but he needed to get the fuck out of that building as soon as possible. She waved him off and he took off, sprinting for the nearest train station.

He found an obscure one in a residential area a few blocks over and vaulted up it to get up to roof-level.

And then he ran. As fast as he could. He didn’t think about direction, he just went until he was panting, standing up high. Higher than he was usually comfortable going in the daytime.

But higher was safer. He could finally breathe up there, looking out at the bay, with his tie flapping all over and the glint of sun off of building blinding him.

He’d done it.

He had a name now and a face and an apology from the man who’d halted the first carriage in the trainwreck that was his life.

It felt good.

It felt right.

It felt just.

He had to tell Hannah.

But maybe not now.

Maybe for now, he could just stand in the sun and finally, _finally_ just breathe.

Mr. Guo was in the office when Sam got back down there. Sam was stricken with sudden fear, but relaxed upon seeing that Fei Hong and Hui hadn’t come down with him.

No.

Mr. Guo was falling over himself at Matt who had apparently made the mistake of opening his door to ask Kirsten how things had gone at the meeting. Kirsten was in her office making rummaging sounds.

Matt had his panic face on.

Leilani and Achara gave Sam devilish smirks when he came back in. Leilani pointed back at where Mr. Guo was listing out all the cases that Matt had done and talking about how inspired he’d been by his and Foggy’s work back in the city.

Leilani tapped her wrist and flashed a full hand of fingers at Sam twice. Ten minutes.

Ten minutes Matt had been trying to escape this conversation.

Hilarious.

“Boss,” Sam asked. “No clients means we can pack up early?”

Leilani and Achara jerked back towards Matt with hope on their faces.

He was ripe for the picking.

“Huh? Oh. Sure,” he said. “Whatever you want—hey, Mr., uh?”

“Guo,” Mr. Guo said. “Sorry, sorry, just one more thing—the case with that reporter, what was her name—”

“Page,” Matt said miserably.

“Page, that’s right,” Mr. Guo said. “Incredible work. So smooth—and the Winter Soldier—”

“That was my husb—my partner,” Matt said while Leilani and Achara scream-laughed silently at the front desk. “That was all my partner, let me actually get him. He loves to talk about that,” Matt continued stiltedly.

“Is he here?” Mr. Guo asked. “Mr. Nelson? He’s here? Right now?”

Matt nodded with an awkward smile.

“Aha!” Kirsten said. “I found it. The little shit thought it could get away from—What’s wrong with your face?”

Matt seized his opportunity for a getaway and blurted out something about how he needed to go find the dog. He spun around and ran into his own door, then hip checked the knob in his haste to get inside. Hazel made a sound of alarm at him and he scolded her soundly.

Mr. Guo and Kirsten stared after him.

“Did I do something wrong?” Mr. Guo asked her.

“No, he’s just shy,” Kirsten deadpanned. “Foggy, come say hello to your fellow Alumni.”

Foggy opened his door without getting up from his desk. He didn’t look away from his computer.

“Hello fellow Alumnus,” he said.

Mr. Guo had the tiniest, most organized 2 second meltdown Sam had ever seen.

“Mr. Nelson,” he said, once he’d collected himself. “It’s an _honor_.”

Foggy finally looked up.

“Oh,” he said. “Immigration-guy. Yes, I remember you now. Hi, sorry. On autopilot here. Just one second.”

Leilani bounced eyebrows at Sam.

“Bossman, numbers one and two?” Sam asked again. “No clients means early release for admin?”

Foggy and Kirsten turned his way at the same time.

“Be free,” Kirsten said.

“Get ye from this place,” Foggy agreed.

That was all Sam and the ladies needed.

“That lawyer,” Leilani said the second they were a block away from the office. “Is so fucking hot I could cry.”

“He’s alright,” Achara agreed.

They stopped by Leilani’s car and waited as she dug through her purse for her keys.

“He’s a Foggy Fan, it’s so cute,” she said.

“What’s Mr. Nelson done that makes all these other lawyers get stupid in front of him?” Achara asked.

Leilani found her keys and unlocked the doors. She shooed the two of them into the car; Sam got shotgun because of seniority.

“He defended the Winter Soldier,” Sam said. “I think most people know him for that.”

“No shit?” Achara said. “Damn. He’s like, real people.”

For real.

“Sam,” Leilani said. “Tell us about Handsome Immigration. You guys were downtown today for forever.”

Oh, right.

He hadn’t even thought of what Kirsten had told the gals that morning. It appeared that she’d called the whole thing a meeting that she required paralegal note-taking services for. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d done that.

“He’s fine,” he said. “Not the worst.”

“Is he single?” Leilani asked.

Sam deflated against the seat.

“I have to _know_ , Sam,” Leilani told him. “My love is waiting for me in New York. We’ve discussed this.”

“Same,” Achara said.

Matt was home by the time Sam escaped the bar and the gals plus Jia, since she’d gotten off work early that day. Foggy wasn’t home. Matt said that he was out with Kirsten, hazing the adjunct.

Sam didn’t know what that meant.

Matt told him not to sweat it.

“So how did it go?” Matt asked him.

“Well--I think, anyways,” Sam said. “He’s not what I expected.”

“You father?” Matt asked.

“Yeah.”

“Hm. They rarely are.”

Sam hummed and traced the grout between the tiles of the kitchen island.

“He apologized though,” he said. “And he meant it. And he came all this way to say it. So I appreciate that, I think.”

“Takes some dedication, that’s for sure,” Matt agreed.

He offered Sam some of the grapes he was separating from the vine. Sam declined.

“Thank you,” he said after a minute. “For telling me to give him a shot.”

Matt paused and then slowly laid his present collection of grape-prisoners on top of the pile in the bowl.

“Anytime,” he said. “Do you feel better?”

Yeah.

Yeah, he did, actually.

“Did you call Hannah yet?” Matt asked.

Oh shit.

Nope. Whoops.

Matt huffed a laugh after him as he hurried downstairs.

“You’re not abandoning me for Who-the-fuck Chung, are you?” Hannah asked tearfully.

No, absolutely not.

“Does he know Mom gave me his name? Tell him it wasn’t my decision. I don’t want any more brothers.”

Wow.

“Oh my god, Sammy. This makes you the baby of the Chung family.”

Oh, hell no.

“I’m not discussing this,” Sam said.

“You’re the baby, oh my god,” Hannah said. “This makes me the extra baby. I am the babiest of all the babies of this fucked-up family."

“They aren’t my family,” Sam said before he could stop himself.

There was a pause.

“You are,” Sam said quieter. “And Mom. And Matt and Foggy and the firm. That’s my family.”

“You sap,” Hannah said.

Whatever.

“You _SAP_.”

WHATEVER, SIBLING. DROP IT. GOD.

“What are you hiding?” Hannah demanded. “You’re hiding something, you’re supposed to tell me everything.”

Sam had agreed to no such thing.

“Mom compels you in spirit to tell me.”

“Well, Mom compels me in spirit to lie viciously to you so—”

“It’s DD, isn’t it?”

Wha—how—how did she know?

And why did she sound so…sad?

“Hannah,” he said.

“I just,” Hannah said. “I’m sorry. I can’t—I’m trying to like, get over myself. I just don’t like the idea of sharing you with someone like that. I dunno, Sammy. I shouldn’t have said anything; my dad’s fine. He’s been there, you know, as much as anyone who didn’t want their kid can be. I shouldn’t—it’s not that I’m jealous or anything, it’s just like—I dunno.”

Wh—

What?

“Hannah,” Sam said quietly. “You realize that I’m not leaving you, right?”

“Yeah, obviously,” Hannah said a little nastily. “It’s not about that—”

No, she didn’t understand.

“I’m not leaving you. Not because of DD. Not because of some walking genetic material waltzing into my life. Hannah, you’re always my sister. And my family. And whatever is mine is yours. You know that.”

Hannah didn’t say anything.

“I don’t want a weird devildad,” she eventually admitted quietly. “I just want you to come home.”

Oh, aww.

“I know it’s scary to let people in,” Sam said. “I know it feels wrong because Mom was just here and it feels like all these other people are trying to take her place. But it’s not like that, Hannah. And we—we don’t have to just be by ourselves. We don’t have to just take the family that comes our way. We can—we’re allowed to let other people in.”

He barely heard the sniff. Hannah wouldn’t cy on the phone with him, though. She’d wait until she hung up and then she’d throw the phone down on the couch cushion next to her and hold her face in her hands.

She’d learned it from Mom.

Mom was still there with them, in those little gestures.

“Matt’s a good person,” Sam said. “And he’s scared to be someone important for me because he doesn’t think he’s good enough. But he’s willing to try. And I trust him, so I’m willing to try, too. Okay?”

“He’s not good enough for you,” Hannah said immediately.

Ha. Mm. Biased opinion there.

“Hannah, give it a chance,” he said. “And give yourself a chance. Make some friends, girl. Bring them home. We’ll do a wild, multicultural Thanksgiving next year. There’ll be too much food and none of the plates will match and our apartment will be too small to hold everyone so we’ll have to go to someone else’s house and we can just be happy. And that can just be our family from now on. But we’ve gotta, like, let ourselves take the first step out of this bubble that we’ve lived in our whole lives.”

Hannah’s breathing sounded a little harsh and Sam could hear her wiping her face.

“I’ll try,” she said.

 _Yes_.

Just try.

“No promises,” Hannah said. “I’m not good at making friends. Can I have the right to teach DD dad jokes?”

“No, in fact, you have zero texting rights and if you ever speak to him unsupervised I’m going to put ice in your slippers,” Sam said.

Hannah sniffed.

“Well, now I gotta teach DD dad jokes,” she said miserably. “It’s the only way I’ll be okay with him being in our family, Sam.”

Hhhhhh.

Whatever.

“Oh my god, did you just give in?”

No.

“Sammy.”

He was hanging up.

“Damn, bro. You’re serious. Okay I can be serious, too. Give me his number.”

Fuck off, sibling.

With love, obviously.

“SAM. GIVE ME HIS NUMBER.”

Byeeeee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deciding what family is and who is allowed to enter that circle can be really tough. 
> 
> Just for reference, Fei Hong Chung has 2 sons in this AU besides Sam. One is Hui Chung, here. He's the older of the two. He's 30 and a lawyer. The younger one is 26 and a teacher. Both the lawyer and the teacher moved to the US for school and decided to settle there. They brought their father and mother over after all their paperwork was done. 
> 
> Hannah's father has two daughters with his wife. Both of her half-sisters are older than her. This is what they're referring to when they're arguing about who is the youngest. 
> 
> Thanks for reading and commenting, y'all!! It's been very helpful in getting this piece out there ❤❤❤❤


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